A Glimpse of the Semantic Future

I’ve been bringing up the Semantic Web off and on in my talks for some time now, but it’s hard to actually illustrate what it will mean to the end user. Maybe that’s because the approach I, and many others, take is to describe the back end–what the data looks like, how the architecture fits together.

Jesse James Garrett (of adaptive path) teamed up with Mozilla Labs to put together a series of videos that show a proof-of-concept design of a theoretical semantic browser project named Aurora. What’s nice about these videos is that it’s not just an apocryphal future-cast. Even though the videos seem a little sterile, it’s clear that they’ve gone through a great deal of effort to apply what they know of current trends to create a very plausible scenario for the future of the web. Yet another reason why libraries need to stop tooling around with geriatric and proprietary data formats and get with the rest of the world.

This is a very shiny and nice video, but the browser they demo seems to me to be a mishmash of HCI and Information Visualization concepts, and not necessarily the good kind. The ‘universe’ as browsing metaphor has been ‘invented’ time and again, and I personally don’t see it catching on. It’s just too busy, and would be incredibly daunting to novice users.

The data mashup/re-vis technology is pretty solid, as is the seamless communication.

I noticed the user had some kind of 3D interface device – intriguing. When are we going to see touchscreens in the desktop environment?

Good points. I think that the video assumes a fairly significant evolution of technical adeptness on the part of the user. As always, novices will be left out in the cold.

I’m actually more interested in the implications of the data architecture behind the Aurora model, more than the interface itself. As we move toward what’s depicted in the video, we’ll doubtlessly see a number of alternative front-ends competing in the marketplace.

Ditto on the touch screen. I did notice that the “farmer” in the first video had some kind of mouse that was on an extendable arm, giving her the ability to take advantage of the Z axis.

Me

A father and a library geek.

I work at the Darien Library in Connecticut as the Assistant Director for Innovation and User Experience.